Pantheism, Its Story and Significance eBook

FOREWORD.

[Sidenote: Pantheism not Sectarian or even Racial.]

Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting
the main religions of the world in being comparatively
free from any limits of period, climate, or race.
For while what we roughly call the Egyptian Religion,
the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and
others of similar fame have been necessarily local
and temporary, Pantheism has been, for the most part,
a dimly discerned background, an esoteric significance
of many or all religions, rather than a “denomination”
by itself. The best illustration of this characteristic
of Pantheism is the catholicity of its great prophet
Spinoza. For he felt so little antagonism to
any Christian sect, that he never urged any member
of a church to leave it, but rather encouraged his
humbler friends, who sought his advice, to make full
use of such spiritual privileges as they appreciated
most. He could not, indeed, content himself with
the fragmentary forms of any sectarian creed.
But in the few writings which he made some effort
to adapt to the popular understanding, he seems to
think it possible that the faith of Pantheism might
some day leaven all religions alike. I shall
endeavour briefly to sketch the story of that faith,
and to suggest its significance for the future.
But first we must know what it means.

[Sidenote: Meaning of Pantheism.]

[Sidenote: God is All.]

[Sidenote: But not Everything Is God.]

[Sidenote: Analogy of the Human Organism.]

Pantheism, then, being a term derived from two Greek
words signifying “all” and “God,”
suggests to a certain extent its own meaning.
Thus, if Atheism be taken to mean a denial of the
being of God, Pantheism is its extreme opposite; because
Pantheism declares that there is nothing but God.
This, however, needs explanation. For no Pantheist
has ever held that everything is God, any more
than a teacher of physiology, in enforcing on his
students the unity of the human organism, would insist
that every toe and finger is the man. But such
a teacher, at least in these days, would almost certainly
warn his pupils against the notion that the man can
be really divided into limbs, or organs, or faculties,
or even into soul and body. Indeed, he might without
affectation adopt the language of a much controverted
creed, so far as to pronounce that “the reasonable
soul and flesh is one man”—­“one
altogether.” In this view, the man is the
unity of all organs and faculties. But it does
not in the least follow that any of these organs or
faculties, or even a selection of them, is the man.